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A number of oil tankers sailed out of the Strait of Hormuz on Thursday along a United Nations-recommended route, defying threats by Iran that any ship not following its approved route “will be dealt with accordingly.”
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The passage of the Liberian-flagged vessel — perhaps aptly named the Stoic Warrior — came amid continued uncertainty about the future of the crucial waterway. The initial U.S.-Iran agreement included reopening the key trade route, but the two sides have been engaged in public disputes over the terms of that deal.
The initial 60-day agreement brought significant relief to energy markets, the shipping industry and the thousands of sailors stranded in the Persian Gulf. However, it left key questions unresolved, including how traffic would be managed and how mines purportedly laid by Iran would be cleared.
Traffic has also remained far below prewar levels.
Secretary of State Marco Rubio, touring Gulf nations in an effort to reassure U.S. allies over the deal, said Thursday the waters of the Strait of Hormuz “do not belong to any nation state.”
But Iran’s navy blasted the route laid out by the International Maritime Organization, a U.N. agency that oversees shipping at sea.
Vessels must use a route close to the Iranian coastline, the Revolutionary Guard Navy said, warning that transit otherwise is “highly dangerous and prohibited.”
“A few hours ago, without prior notice or coordination with the Islamic Republic of Iran, certain authorities announced a new route for vessel traffic in the Strait of Hormuz,” it said. It warned that “any violating vessels will be dealt with accordingly,” without elaborating.
The United Kingdom Maritime Trade Operations Centre, an organization run by the British navy that helps protect commercial shipping in high-risk areas, said Thursday that a cargo vessel off Oman had been hit by an “unknown projectile,” causing damage to the bridge. No casualties were reported.
Stoic Warrior attempted its exit early Thursday out of the Persian Gulf, moving westward along the coastline of the United Arab Emirates. It then ventured close to Oman’s coast and continued to bend along the Oman’s Musandam Peninsula, avoiding Iranian waters.
Another vessel, the British-flagged World Prize, also appeared to be transiting through the Omani route Thursday morning, an NBC News review of MarineTraffic data showed.
Like Stoic Warrior and World Prize, two dozen ships have taken the Omani route since 5 a.m. ET Thursday, with some still sailing along that route. But at least three ships exiting the Persian Gulf through that route turned back Thursday.
Hapag Lloyd, one of the world’s largest shipping companies, confirmed Thursday that it no longer has any ships stuck in the Strait of Hormuz. A spokesperson said in a statement to NBC News that its vessels have all “since safely left the Gulf” after “careful assessment of the security situation and in close coordination with the relevant authorities, security partners and our teams on board and ashore.”
The uncertainty means that many ship owners are still erring on the side of caution, so movement through the strait is more of a trickle than a rush. ”Most of what we’ve seen so far is inventories being shipped out, not much if any of fresh loadings in the Gulf, barring Iranians,” Halvor Ellefsen, a director at Fearnleys Shipbrokers, told NBC News.
Nonetheless, the slow stream of ships is helping restore confidence in the waterway, with energy prices easing and several airlines reducing fuel surcharges.
About 35 million barrels of oil have left the region through the strait since the agreement was signed, according to a new analysis from marine tracking firm Kpler. More than 70 ships had passed through the waterway since Wednesday, according to Kpler, though far below the more than 130 ships daily before the war.
The international benchmark price, Brent crude, has erased its wartime gains and was trading around $72 per barrel Thursday, significantly lower than the $126 per barrel peak it reached in April.
Still, it will take weeks “before we see production coming back on track in earnest in the Gulf,” Ellefsen said.
“Tankers appear to be racing to exploit a 60-day window to move Middle East Gulf crude before the Hormuz reopening expires,” Lloyd’s List Intelligence said in a briefing Thursday.
The International Maritime Organization announced a plan earlier this week to evacuate around 11,000 seafarers from the region, saying it had secured “necessary safety guarantees.” As of Thursday morning, data from the U.N. shipping agency showed some 57 ships carrying an estimated 1,100 seafarers had passed through the strait under the plan.
Oman issued guidelines Wednesday for vessels sailing along its coastline, listing wait times and transit times through several sections of the route as part of its coordination with the U.N. agency.
But the Iranian navy’s warning against using that route has further complicated matters.
Iran had been charging passage tolls for weeks along the route that it recommends through its waters, despite U.S. insistence that passage must remain free. Trump said Tehran had told the U.S. in the wake of last week’s deal that no tolls were being sought. Rubio said Thursday, in Bahrain, that “no country on earth has a right to charge for the use of international waterways.”
A senior United Arab Emirates diplomat, Anwar Gargash, warned Thursday that “new geopolitical realities cannot be imposed on the Gulf Arab states as a result of treacherous aggression.”
“Imposing a fait accompli born of aggression does not establish stability, but rather sows the seeds of future discord and conflict. This is precisely what applies to the Strait of Hormuz,” he said on X.
Mithil Aggarwal is a Hong Kong-based reporter/producer for NBC News.
Matthew Mulligan is a senior reporter for the NBC News Social Newsgathering team based in London.
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